Deracialized Nostalgia, reracialized community, and truncated gentrification: capital and cultural flows in Richmond, Virginia and Durban, South Africa. Issue 2 (4th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bond, Patrick; Browder, Laura
• Is Part Of: Journal of cultural geography. Volume 36:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 211
• Page End: 245
• Publication Date: 2019-05-04
• Subjects: Gentrification -- racial segregation -- memory -- Richmond -- Virginia -- Durban -- South Africa; Human geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- United States -- Periodicals; Material culture -- Periodicals; Material culture -- United States -- Periodicals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2019.1595914
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0887-3631

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those being displaced by the process (often low-income people of color). Far less attention is paid to a revealing place-marketing strategy that papers over race politics. Businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods appeal to their customers' sense of nostalgia for a vanished way of life, while eliding racial injustices prevalent in the times they evoke. The process entails re-racialization of such sites without reference to the segregatory politics central to their creation: a mode of remaking history, without memory. In larger cities this may not be so evident, since gentrification dynamics are driven by both a sufficiently large share of the population with high disposable incomes, and a well-developed property redevelopment industry with the capacity to unleash real estate speculation. In contrast, smaller cities that have partially gentrified still exhibit incomplete erasure of the past. They provide a valuable window into this process of historical de- and re-racialization. Two such secondary cities are Richmond, Virginia, and Durban, South Africa. Both have histories of legally-enshrined racial segregation, and both are attempting, with varying degrees of success, to recast inner-city neighborhoods as cool, creative places for middle-class residents to live, consume, and produce.